The Long Earth

Lobsang smiled. ‘Sorry. I was watching the Rumble in the Jungle.’

‘You were what?’

‘Yes, between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. I always do my research, Joshua. I see Ali won with the use of guile, being the older and more experienced fighter. Excellent!’

‘Are you telling me that you have every single televised boxing match in some portable memory?’

‘Yes, of course. Why not? Anticipating and extrapolating, I have now begun the fabrication of two pairs of sparring gloves, the associated hand wraps, two pairs of shorts, two gum shields for the look of the thing, and one plastic protective for your genitals.’

Joshua could hear accelerated activity on the fabrication decks, and, with the protection of his genitals very much at the forefront of his mind, he said, ‘The Rumble in the Jungle wasn’t a sparring match, you understand, Lobsang. It was more like a small war. I’ve seen it a couple of times. Sister Simplicity watches the great bouts occasionally. We all think she has a thing about big sweaty men—’

‘I have studied the rules of sparring for an adequate time,’ said Lobsang, standing up. ‘Two millionths of a second, to be precise. Sorry, did that sound smug?’

Joshua sighed. ‘Actually, it sounded like exaggeration for humorous effect.’

‘Good!’ said Lobsang. ‘That’s exactly what I intended.’

‘That sounds smug.’

‘Well, it must be said that I have a lot to be smug about, don’t you think? And if you’ll excuse me…’

Lobsang walked away. When Joshua had first seen the ambulant unit move it was rather jerky, obviously artificial, and he couldn’t help noticing that now it moved like an athlete. Lobsang clearly believed in self- improvement. He reappeared after a few minutes, dressed in a heavy white robe, and handed Joshua a kit. Joshua turned his back and began to get changed.

Lobsang recited, ‘Sparring: a healthy way of getting exercise while at the same time honing those parts of the brain responsible for observation, deduction and anticipation, and, not least, developing the spirit of fair play. I suggest that we use the rules devised for a training session rather than an all-out fight, as laid down in 1891 by Brigadier General Houseman. Who, I notice, was shortly afterwards accidentally shot in the head by one of his own men in the Sudan, an incident from which no level of sparring expertise could have saved him. Ironic! Subsequent to this I have since picked up several thousand other allusions to the sport. Really, Joshua, I commend your modesty in turning your back on me when pulling on your shorts, although it is not really required.’

Joshua turned — and saw a new Lobsang. When he slipped off the robe, under boxing vest and shorts was a body that would scare Arnold Schwarzenegger.

‘You do take things seriously, don’t you, Lobsang?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Never mind. OK,’ he said. ‘The idea is to touch gloves, step back, and we’ll go for it…’ He glanced out of the window at worlds scrolling past. ‘But shouldn’t you also be keeping an eye on the Mark Twain? I’m not sure I like the idea of the two of us exchanging blows while the ship steps on blindly.’

‘Don’t worry about that. I have autonomous sub-units that will take care of the ship for a while. And, by the way, Mark Twain himself would find this situation remarkably fitting! I will tell you about that after I have won. Shall we dance, Joshua?’

Joshua was not surprised to find that he could still spar pretty well. After all, out in the Long Earth, you either kept up good reflexes and stamina, or you died. So now he seemed to be laying more glove on Lobsang than Lobsang was laying on him. He said, as he blocked the next blow, ‘Are you sure you are giving it all you’ve got, Lobsang?’

They moved apart and Lobsang grinned. ‘I could kill you with a single blow; if necessary, these arms could serve as pile drivers.’ He carefully stepped away from a tentative attack from Joshua. ‘That’s why I let you hit me first, so that I could calibrate a suitable response. I am fighting you at your own strength, but regrettably not with your speed, which I suspect is innately better than mine because of the phenomenon of muscle memory — embodied cognition, the muscles as part of one’s overall intelligence, amazing! I am going to have to reflect that in my own anatomy, a more distributed processing design, in the next upgrade of this body. And, Joshua, you are also pretty good at deceit, even with your limited body language. I salute you for that.’

Which was true, because at that moment Joshua landed a blow in the middle of that enormous chest. Joshua said, ‘I am not certain that it’s Tibetan, but there is an old saying: “If you are fighting, don’t talk, fight!”’

‘Yes, of course you are right. One must fight with the whole mind.’

And suddenly there was a fist right between Joshua’s eyes. It didn’t actually connect; Lobsang had pulled the punch with astonishing precision, and Joshua could feel only a slight pressure on the tiny hairs of his nose.

Lobsang said, ‘There is an apt old Tibetan saying: “Don’t stand too close to a Tibetan chopping wood.” You are much too slow in every respect, Joshua. Still, perhaps you can defeat me with guile for a while longer, until I pass your level of competence. I find this exercise therapeutic and invigorating and educational. Shall we continue?’

Joshua got back to work, breathing hard. ‘You’re actually enjoying this, aren’t you? Although with your background I was half expecting you were going to try some kind of kung fu stuff.’

‘You have been watching the wrong kind of movies, my friend. I was a motorcycle repairman, remember, better with all things mechanical and electrical than with my fists or feet. I once wired a magneto on to the door of my work room, so that the gentleman next door who regularly came in to steal from me got quite a large electric shock. A little bit of instant karma, and that was the only time I ever laid anyone low. No kick-boxing required.’

They broke again.

Lobsang said, ‘And now you, my friend, have been instrumental in helping me emulate the original Mark Twain who, if we can believe his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi, fought with another pilot on a stern-wheeler in full steam, the man having been bullying a trainee pilot. Every now and again he had to leave the fight and make sure the vessel was still on course — rather as I am guiding our ship through the worlds, even as we spar. Given Twain’s cheerful tendency to put a shine on any anecdote, I am not certain of the truth of this, but I admire the man, which is why I named this ship after him… Actually he would have called his book Stepping Westward, but the title, alas, had already been claimed by William Wordsworth. The old sheep of the Lake District: very fine poet, but somehow “exploring on the Wordsworth” does not quite have the appropriate ring, does it?’

Joshua said, ‘Wordsworth had his moments, according to Sister Georgina. It is a beauteous evening, calm and free…’

‘I know it, of course. The holy time is quiet as a nun breathless with adoration. Very apt! Are we sparring with poetry too, Joshua?’

‘Shut up and box, Lobsang.’

23

WHEN THEY WERE done the sun was setting on all the worlds. Joshua took a shower, musing on all the meanings and usages of the word ‘strange’. Boxing like a nineteenth-century steamboat captain with an artificial man, while multiple worlds flickered by beneath. Could his life get any odder? Probably, he thought, resigned.

He was coming to like Lobsang, although he was not entirely certain why. Nor was he certain, even now, what exactly Lobsang was. Strange, that was for sure. But then of course plenty of people called him strange, and worse.

He dried himself off, got into a new pair of shorts, put on a fresh T-shirt which bore the slogan ‘Don’t worry! On another Earth it already happened’, and headed back to the saloon deck. The empty staterooms he passed bothered him; it made the Mark Twain feel like a ghost ship, with himself as the first, and possibly the last, ghost.

He walked into the galley, and there was Lobsang, dressed in a bland coverall, standing patient as a statue. ‘Dinner time, Joshua? According to a preliminary cladistic analysis your salmon is not, strictly speaking, salmon, but salmon enough for the grill. We have all the relevant condiments. We also have tracklements, and I bet you have